Any of you that have been in church for any length of time have probably heard a person say something like this. In particular we are talking about parents saying things like, “I am praying for God to show me where my ministry is.” Or something like that, “You know, I’m praying for God to show me my calling”. At Family Face Ministries, we want to tell you four words that will be a big relief to anyone who has prayed that prayer.
Parenting is a ministry. How do we know that?
Jesus said in Matthew 28:19-20 “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. Amen.”
Our Lord, Jesus Christ, commissioned us to make disciples, teaching them to observe all things that He taught us in His Word. For three years He invested himself into the lives of the twelve men He chose to eventually take over the ministry He had established. And then He commissioned them, as His followers, to go and make other disciples.
That act of making disciples, otherwise known as discipleship, affects every one of us as a follower of Christ. Today we want to challenge you to think about discipleship from a whole new angle. How many of us have the great commission, and out of passion and love for the Lord and out of determination to be obedient, have gone and looked for someone to disciple? Someone new at church? or a neighbor or friend? or a co-worker? Then we get inspired because God is working through us and we feel this sense of fulfillment because we’ve satisfied the great commission. Most of us have done it because its very natural to think about from that angle. Well here is the new angle. The angle that is not so natural for us to think about, but rather it’s very natural for us to overlook. As parents we are not excluded from this commission. In fact, parents have a very special, perhaps even greater role in this assignment to make disciples. We want to go out on a limb and say that one of the most important things we will ever do is, minister to, or attend to and disciple, our own family.
Far too often, the fact that we have a responsibility to train our own households is eclipsed when we think that we are fulfilling the commission by discipling others, outside of our family. But when it comes to making disciples, our families should come first. Even when the apostle Paul laid out the qualifications of overseers and elders in the church, he made special emphasis on the fact that if we don’t know how to rule our own house, how can we take care of the church of God? Not only are we to make disciples of all the nations but, included in the great commission is, to make disciples of our own family.
